Speculative Fiction: Beyond a Novel’s Entertainment Value
The classroom is a place to equip students to better understand the world as it was and is. Speculative fiction can help.
Speculative Fiction: A Reading List
Speculative fiction, from Afrofuturism to Star Wars, offers students tools and methods for analyzing social movements, power structures, and utopian thinking.
Simon Miles on Superpowers and Serendipity
An interview with historian of US foreign policy and diplomacy Simon Miles, who finds that surprises in the archives can lead to the most compelling projects.
Assigned Readings: Questions to Ask Yourself
Choosing texts to assign next semester? An experienced instructor offers tips for deciding what to add to your syllabus—and what to let go.
Lies, Damn Lies, and…Primary Sources?
An instructor shares her approach for teaching students how to evaluate historical materials and claims of veracity made by their originators.
Tyler S. Sprague on the Intersection of Structure and Design
An interview with Tyler S. Sprague, a historian of the built environment whose work depends on multidisciplinarity and a deep knowledge of structure and materials.
Transatlantic Studies: A Reading List
Using the Atlantic Ocean as a guiding metaphor, transatlanticism emphasizes the fluid nature of contrived national boundaries and identities.
This One Number on a Form Can Reduce Gender Inequality
Reducing the gap between quantitative evaluation scores for male and female instructors may be as simple as changing a single number.
Natural History: A Reading List
This annotated bibliography samples scholarship on the rich—and difficult—history of natural history.
The Age of Wonder Meets the Age of Information
What can past eras of information overload teach students about critically consuming content in the present?